The Timestream Drifter
by Valkyrii
Summary: Vega Cole was your average twenty three year old, until she wasn't any more. Follow her adventures as she drifts through time & space.
1. SOS

I'm not entirely sure if this will post, I only recently discovered I can still get internet but it's a shitty connection most of the time and it takes pretty much forever to do anything. I'll keep it short though, test the water so to speak.

I am alive, I hope.

I'm suffering under the family curse but I'm mostly okay. It's growing on me. I miss everyone; Mom, Jules, Kasey, Ben and yeah, even Brae. I love you guys and I hope you're doing alright without me. I hate that I never got to say goodbye properly but I wasn't given an option before I was carted off. Great Aunt Beth said to say hi though she wasn't sure if anyone remembered her who was still alive. She passed away a couple of weeks ago now, after giving me the skinny on my new life. I wish you could have met her, she was a cracker.

If you can read this, everyone back in my normal dimension, like and repost so I know my mesage got through. I'll keep writing regardless of whether I'm capable of posting or not, this journal thing is kind of therapeutic, which is something I desperately need.

All my love,

Vega


	2. It All Began When

So, I guess you're all a bit confused huh? I don't blame you really, I'm confused and I'm the one living in this weird ass dream. I guess I should explain, and to do that I should start at the very beginning.

Two or so thousand years ago there was a woman who lived on a tiny island off the coast of Greece. Her name has been forgotten after all this time but her life is very well known to my family. She is said to have been a great beauty, more so than Helen of Troy ever was, and because of this the titan Chronus became enamoured with her legend. He desired her as his mistress, lonely as he was in the cage he had been trapped in, and sent an emissary to fetch her. She refused, which enraged Chronus. So great was his rage that, from his prison beneath the underworld he cursed her, a despicable curse which bound her to wander through time and space to Chronus himself died. She would never rest, never have her family, never know love again. Her mortal husband, left behind with their toddling daughter, spent a dozen years chasing a seer to show him the way to Olympus' gates so he might petition the gods to lift Chronus' curse. When he finally got to Olympus the gods refused to rescind Chronus' curse, their only offer to guide his wife to the afterlife. Devestated, but grateful his wife wouldn't suffer, the man years later, he discovered his mistake as Chronus claimed his daughter, leaving her own husband with two small children. So it's gone, down the generations. As one Chronian approaches their death, another relative is chosen and the cycle begins again. That is my fate.

Over the years, some of the curses power has leaked into my families genes, mutating it. Now, I guess the simplest term for what Chronians are, is witches. Aunt Beth made it seem much grander and more daunting when she explained it to me. She gave me the Grimoire, a book beyond my expectations, and told me to heed it's warnings.

The Grimoire was once just a book, leather bound with crisp velum pages. Now though, so much magic has seeped into it, both from the words written in it and the ambient magic hanging around. It was more than just a spell book, it was a history of the Chronians; a record of all the times, dimensions and alternate timelines they'd been to. It was a chronicle of friendships, love affairs and secrets. A legacy and a warning.


	3. Ask A Stupid Question

The Grimoire is a scary looking book. It has it's own atmosphere and an aura of pure power. It took me almost a whole day before I could crack the front cover but the moment I did the whole universe opened up before me. I'll never forget the enormity of what I felt that first time, reading it through.

The first page was gilt, depicting a towering Yew tree that danced in an unseen breeze, actually moving on the page. The trunk was marked with the roman numeral for one, which looked like it had been carved into the wood of the tree. Each branch contained a name, blossoming from the branch in delicate script, followed by two dates; date of induction and date of death. My name swung gently from the top most branch, Aunt Beths name swaying just one limb below it. As I scanned the page, unfamiliar names and long passed dates blurring together, I noticed something that made my heart race in panic. The dates were getting further and further apart. My Great-Aunt Beth had been inducted on her twenty forth birthday, and had died nearly eighty years later. Where as the Chronian before her had been inducted on their twenty forth birthday also but had passed on only seventy something years later. If the pattern held I was looking at nearly a century of constant movement through time.

Page two was a list of rules, the dos and don'ts of traveling through time and space. Most of it was common sense stuff like; Don't get involved in local politics, limbs don't regenerate, never lose the Charm, always refer to the Grimoire if unsure, don't try to bring other humans back to the Estate and don't fall in love. The later I would assume is because of the one before it, and the fact that there was very little warning before a Chronian shifted through dimensions.

The next section was immense, the words on the page miniscule until my eyes settled on them, each paragraph enlarging only to allow me to read them. It was a journal of sorts, a chronicle of the lives of all those whom had gone before me. It spanned only twelve Chronians but there was at least two entries in any given week and each entry averaged six pages. Single spaced. The journals were perhaps the most exciting part of the book, imbued with the emotions and thoughts of each writer, the history practically leaped off the page with a vivid intensity which had me captivated for hours. A good half dozen hours had passed before I could tear myself away from my ancestors. It was something tangible, I guess, which anchored me to my new fate, the knowledge that I wasn't the only one.

Next was a short, blank section, thirteen pages long with a single heading. Guide Book. That one had me stumped for a while. I poked, prodded, questioned, asked politely and even yelled at the book to tell me what the guide book was. Eventually I figured it out, by accident of course. A finger placed on the heading followed by the question, 'Where am I?' filled the blank pages with as much useful information about the current place I was as it could. It was incredible. A history book with no chronological order, a map with no borders. A compass with no direction. Each entry was accompanied by a notation of which Chronians had visited which time lines. It was rare for two Chronians to find themselves in the same stream. The rest of the book was devoted to spells and recipes, information and rituals, things that were both perplexing and a godsend. It also had a mind of it's own, I would bet all those years of soaking power had given it semi sentience. It knew what I wanted and even flipped through the pages till it landed on the ones I needed, even if I didn't realise I needed it.

The whole damned thing was linked to the Charm, which was a silver disk about three centimeters wide with an inky black pearl in the center. The disk itself was ringed with line after line of runes, combinations of symbols I was completely unfamiliar with. The only readable line on the thing was the line closest to the pearl. 'De tempore et de loco fac citius focis.' Roughly translated, it says 'Out of time and out of place - to my hearth, make all haste.' Clutching the pearl whilst saying the Latin phrase would send me back to the Estate from wherever I was no matter what time or place I was in. I don't know how the others kept it with them, but the Grimoire gave me an easy solution. It hurt a little. Scratch that, it had hurt a lot. When I had discovered the Charm the Grimoire had swung itself open and flipped to a page containing a small ritual. It would sink the Charm into my palm so I only had to clench my fist and utter the phrase to go home. I wouldn't run the risk of losing it unless someone cut it physically from my hand. It had required a fairly deep cut with a silver knife laced with Angelica and Camomile and a short phrase of something akin to Old English. The Charm had then literally burrowed into my palm, in part thanks to my bungled pronunciation I am sure, where the pearl made a barely visible lump in the exact center of my bloody appendage. It still stings a little, but I can only guess that's to be expected.


End file.
